As I walked across that bridge forty-two years ago, it was so quiet, so peaceful, so orderly, no one was saying a word. . . . When we got to the highest point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, looking down across the river, we could see a sea of blue: Alabama state troopers. . . . You saw these guys putting on gas masks, they came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, trampling us with horses and releasing tear gas.(1)